This paper aims to clarify the coupling internship’s educational impact (CIS) implemented as part of global education at Osaka University. In Japan, the need for “global education” and “career development” is increasing due to several contributing factors that also include social background. Still it has been pointed out that these educational systems are not well coordinated with each other. We aim to clarify the coupling internship’s educational impact (CIS) implemented as part of global education at Osaka University and its effectiveness from career education. Specifically, 1) the educational effects of the program are analyzed using text mining (KH Coder) from the reports of students who participated in CIS, and 2) the results of 1) are compared with the "social and vocational independence and the skills necessary for a smooth transition to society work-life," (from now on referred to as "skills necessary for social and vocational independence") which are required and developed in career education. As a result, the following nine educational effects were noted: 1. “Improvement of communication skills,” 2. “Improvement of problem-solving skills,”3.“Understanding of different cultures and fields,” 4.“Understanding of others,” 5.“Self-understanding,” 6.“Understanding of industry work,” 7.“Understanding of work ethic,” 8.“Thinking about global career,” and 9.“Vision and motivation for the future.” The results were consistent with three of the “skills necessary for social and vocational independence. Therefore, we can say that CIS had a certain effect on the perspective of career education. The results of this study will help us to reconsider how to manage and collaborate with “global education” and “career education” in the future.

This study reports the effectiveness of the short-term international programs conducted by Takasaki University of Health and Welfare by running a quantitative and qualitative analysis of data acquired from 67 students who joined the 2019 and 2020 programs. A “Global Competence Self-evaluation Rubric” was used to compare their knowledge, skills, and attitudes “before” and “after” participating in those programs. The data obtained showed a discernible positive improvement in almost every category of the rubric from the “before” and “after” responses. In addition, we classified the information obtained from the students’ written report about their motivation and experiential education acquired during those programs into 5 categories. We integrated the 5 categories into a chart and a table under the titles “Reasons and purpose for participation”, “Overall Comparison Between Countries”, “Re-evaluation of Self- Esteem”, “Human Relationships”, and “Clarification of the Motivation for the Future”. The underlying outcome shows that the program helped students to gain new knowledge and expertise in their fields, helped them to improve their personal skills, improved their self-confidence and provided an incentive to challenge new obstacles.

This paper describes the benefits of a short-term overseas internship and explores the reasons behind it. It analyzes whether “basic skills for working in a society”, as defined by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) were improved by an overseas internship. Results indicated that the outcome was mostly positive and the beneficial effects of the internship had been sustained for at least one year. Among the many benefits, the development of students’ initiative was especially distinctive. This was inspired by the environment which required students to be proactive and adapt to their new surroundings. This study proves that overseas internship is effective in facilitating the skills necessary to succeed in today’s society. This finding should help the design of online internships, an alternative in response to COVID-19.

This is a practical report on an educational course aiming for intercultural communicative competence through domestic classroom lectures and activities. Each session is constructed by a combination of a lecture, a related case study and/or a workshop based on Kolb’s experiential learning model. This paper makes a specific and detailed description of the organization of the course and students’ reaction to it. The mean of Likert scale of student satisfaction with the course was significantly higher than that of the overall on-campus courses. Even if it did not contribute much to the direct exchange with foreigners, the students’ concern in different cultures was sufficiently improved. The effect of learning has been enhanced by a well-balanced arrangement of academic lectures, practical case studies/story-telling and simulated work experiences.

Since 2015, Osaka University has had a practical internship called the Coupling Internship (CIS), which is supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. CIS is conducted with mixed participants from Osaka University and overseas universities from both humanities and engineering majors. During the 2-week-long group internship at a Japanese manufacturing firm, students with diverse backgrounds work together to propose findings and solutions to the firm’s problems. 164 students of Osaka University have completed the CIS so far. This paper attempts to find the effects of the CIS experience on participants’career considerations, based on the responses to a follow-up survey of CIS participants who graduated from Osaka University. The results show that both Humanities and Engineering students enjoyed positive effects but that the type of effect tend to differ between the two: the biggest impact on Engineering students was an expansion of the career paths they considered to include international options while, for the Humanities students, it was self-understanding.